Bringing Home the Birkin

I spent the first morning in Moscow sightseeing with Juan, taken off guard by both the bitter cold and the haphazard class distinctions among the people. After living in a Spanish city where both the thermometer and the socioeconomic ladder lacked such extremes, my system definitely felt the shock. Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton all had multiple store locations, but parked on the same street were fifty-year-old cars rotting from rust. And the landscape was dominated by gray—gray skies, gray streets, gray faces. It’s not that I didn’t think it was beautiful…I did. Red Square, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral—how could you feel anything but awe when you looked at the onion domes? Plus, Juan and I had a gorgeous room at the Park Hyatt, a luxury hotel in a central location. It was really that Moscow fell squarely into the same category as Vegas—great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there